I was among the handful of journalists, Indian and European, who were present at The Hague, Netherlands, when the European Union (EU) and India signed their strategic partnership at their fifth summit on 9 November,  2004, under the Dutch EU Presidency. There was nothing spectacular about the event where former prime ministers Manmohan Singh of India and Jan Peter Balkenende  of The Netherlands addressed the meeting.   The two leaders  noted that the EU and India are “natural partners “ and stressed their commitment to work together to deepen  cooperation and relations.

   Besides Balkenende, present at the summit were the then President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, EU High Representative for Common Foreign and  Security Policy  Javier Solana, EU  Commissioner in charge of Trade Relations  Pascal Lamy and Dutch Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Bernard Bot.  India was additionally represented by then External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh and Commerce and Industry Minister  Kamal Nath.

In a 32-point joint press statement released after The Hague  meeting, the two sides said that the EU-India Partnership “has evolved over the years from economic and development cooperation, to acquire higher political and strategic dimensions, and that this should be further strengthened through more intensive dialogue.”   Talks during the meeting  included a wide range of issues - trade, security, terrorism, environment as well as foreign policy issues related with developments in Palestine, Afghanistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

   Fifteen EU-India summits, the first of which took place in the Portuguese capital Lisbon in June 2000, have taken place till now.  As a result of these summits   a number of dialogues have happened between the EU and India at the political and  working level.  The EU and India are now cooperating in many fields, including trade, IT, climate change, maritime security,  digitalisation, and health.

The first India-EU Leaders’ Meeting was held on 8 May  2021  via video link in Porto, Portugal with the participation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with leaders of all the 27 EU Member States .

Yet, despite these many summits and other high-level meetings, the general perception of the EU in India as well in the Global South remains unchanged, i.e. the EU is merely a trade and economic bloc with little clout on the international stage.

The main focus of EU-India relations has  been trade. This is nothing out of the ordinary as trade policy is one of the few areas in which  the EU can function together. Defence and security issues remain largely a competence of the individual  EU member states.

  “Behind closed doors, key Indian players may confess that on decisive issues, beyond trade, London, Berlin and Paris are more important than Brussels, “ opined Jean-Luc Racine, Emeritus Senior Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies in Paris in an article .

   Moreover, the European bloc’s  endeavours to project itself as a major international player has not been successful till now. Its foreign policy agenda suffered a major setback in the failure of the Iran nuclear deal. Brussels was playing  a key role in the  deal.

   The EU’s staunch pro-Ukraine  policy is also facing major problems as seen by recent setbacks suffered by Ukraine on the battlefield.  Moreover, Brussels has failed to woo countries from the Global South for support against Russia.

  The EU has also spent millions of dollars to resolve the Palestine issue but as the saying here goes, the EU is a “payer but not a player “. Moreover, compared with the US, the European bloc has hardly any influence on developments in the Middle East.

   Analysts say the EU cannot play a major role on the international scene with its 27 members having their own diverging vested interests and policies which at times is also beset by colonial-era thinking. 

 As India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar put it “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems”.  An Indian expert on EU affairs, Sunil Prasad , Secretary General of the Europe India Chamber of Commerce in Brussels, commented that “only if Europe comes out of this mindset shall it realise the new economic, social and security challenges the countries beyond European shores are facing.”

  EU’s current foreign policy chief Josep Borrell himself confessed in a recent conference  in Spain  that “to become a true geopolitical actor, the EU must be more united and have the means to respond timely to challenges. We need a new ‘software’ for taking decisions, so that one member state can't block a decision. ”

Strategic partnership: A cliched expression?

   To come back to the issue  of strategic partnership, there is  no clear cut definition of what a strategic partnership entails.  Prof Rajendra  Jain, a distinguished scholar on EU-India relations,  notes that in recent years the term strategic partnership has been used frequently by many nations  .

  “Some European Scholars consider the EU’s strategic partnerships to be merely a “honorary degree” awarded to certain countries, “ he wrote in the book titled India and the European Union, edited by Jain, emeritus professor of European Studies and Director Europe Asia Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi.

   The EU has strategic partnerships with over 12 countries, including China and Russia.  Those who erroneously think that strategic partnership means all milk and honey need to consider  the current state of EU-Russia relations. Their strategic partnership has now tuned into a strategic hostility due to the war in Ukraine.  Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently  said he believes that Europe will not be a partner for Russia for at least a generation.

  "The acute phase of Russia’s military and political confrontation with the West continues. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that it is in full swing. Our European neighbors are showing particular zeal in terms of anti-Russian rhetoric," he told the 32nd Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy held on 18 May in Moscow.

   India and the European Union held their fourth Strategic Partnership Review Meeting on 08 May 2023  in New Delhi. The meeting reviewed the entire gamut of the India–EU bilateral relationship detailed in the ‘India-EU Strategic Partnership: A Roadmap to 2025’ agreed during the 15th India–EU Summit in 2020.

  India and the EU went through that extensive review of their successful bilateral relationship also in the context of the meetings organised by India under its G20 Presidency, noted a press release by the European External Action Service.

  Moreover, on the trade front, EU-India trade relations  are  meagre compared to EU-China trade exchanges. In a recent publication , the European Parliament noted that India-EU bilateral trade in goods in 2022 was valued at 115.3 billion euro (€47.6 billion in exports and €67.6 billion in imports.) In comparison in 2022, trade between China and the EU remained robust. According to official statistics, the total trade volume between China and the EU reached 847.3 billion U.S. dollars (790 billion euro.)

   Negotiations on the much-talked  EU-India Free Trade Agreement have also not made much headway .After 15 rounds of negotiations in Brussels and New Delhi, the talks between the parties had stalled by 2013,  and negotiations were relaunched in June 2022.

   However, with significant differences remaining and the first part of 2024 being an election period both in the EU and in India, it is very probable that they will continue well into 2024, said the European Parliament publication.

 Lack of political interest in India

  The Brussels-based think tank Egmont Institute, in a policy brief in April,  said individual EU member States attach a lot of importance to their bilateral relationship with New Delhi and are interacting with the Indian government at the highest level. “However, visits of the leaders of the EU institutions to India are rare. One fails to see a real political interest in India from the Commission President and from the President of the European Council.”

  “The first visit of the  Commission-president Von der Leyen took place only in 2022, and that too in the context of the G20 summit that took place in Delhi. The same can be said for the President of the European Council (Charles Michel)” wrote Jan Luykx, a Senior Associate Fellow at Egmont.

  “The question is therefore whether the EU is institutionally capable of having a real strategic relationship with India that relates to the geopolitical situation of the moment? Defence and Security remain  to a large extent a competence of the individual  member states,” he noted.

  “ Some of these, such as France, have already established a very strong cooperation with India in these fields (and Germany seems to be  interested in it as well). Furthermore, as the Ukraine War has demonstrated, the EU member countries have, amongst themselves, very contrasting views on the  relationship with Russia,” commented Luykx , a former Belgian diplomat  who also served in New Delhi. His last official position was that of chairman of the Belgian National Security Authority.

   Relations between India and the EU have  hit a bump in the road due to the war in Ukraine.  Ever since the war broke out, the EU and the US have been rallying their partners around the world to condemn Russia's aggression and impose sanctions on Moscow.  While India has called for an "immediate cessation of violence" and offered its help to secure a ceasefire, it has refrained from condemning Russia’s military invasion and imposing sanctions.

  On the other hand, China is a common factor to advance closer relations and cooperation between Brussels and New Delhi. Tensions with China have prompted the two to view each other in a new light as valuable partners in reducing economic dependencies on China.

  In February 2023, the EU and India moved to boost their relationship by setting up a new Trade and Technology Council (TTC).   It brings together some of India's most high-profile politicians, including Jaishankar, the foreign minister, and Piyush Goyal, its trade minister, with European Commission counterparts like vice presidents Margrethe Vestager and Valdis Dombrovskis.

Visible cooperation in the IT sector 

  One area where cooperation between the EU and India is  successful and very visible is the IT  sector. Thousands of Indian IT  experts are now working in Belgium and neighbouring countries like the Netherlands  in major banks and telecommunication firms.

   Twenty years ago hardly any Indian could be seen around Schumann, where the EU  headquarters are situated in Brussels. But today you can hear Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu or Marathi etc. spoken  in metros, buses and trams. In fact, in Brussels there is a municipality called Evere which is dubbed as "Chhota India" (small India) as  Indian IT experts are concentrated there. 

   Brussels-New Delhi relations are expected to expand further.  Following the re-election of Modi as Prime Minister for the third time, the President of the European Council Charles Michel  congratulated him .

  “The EU is looking forward to continuing to deepen our strategic partnership with India. Our continents must cooperate on the most pressing global challenges: climate change, peace & security, and the fight against poverty,” he said in a post on X (former twitter)

(The author is an Indian journalist who is a long time resident in Brussels. Views are personal. He can be reached nawabbk98@gmail.com )